I notice that the MSDN Reference for Bing Maps was recently updated to include details of a new “Advanced Shapes” API. I don’t know exactly when this came out and I’ve not seen any releases from the product team about it, but it seems basically to be an official release of the code written by Ricky Brundritt a few years back.

After loading the Advanced Shapes module, the functionality of the default Microsoft.Maps.Polygon object is extended to allow for MultiPolygons and Polygons containing interior rings. (i.e. holes).

It’s nice that this feature has finally been officially incorporated into the Bing Maps code – it’s surprising how often you need to define these sorts of shapes. For example, the following code listing defines a polygon representing the shape of South Africa which, thanks to the Advanced Shapes API, can now correctly exclude the fully-enclosed Lesotho by defining an interior ring around it:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title></title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ecn.dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=7.0"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var MM = Microsoft.Maps;
var map = null;
function GetMap() {
// Create a new map
map = new Microsoft.Maps.Map(
document.getElementById("mapDiv"),
{
credentials: "At3aYXF4p6L___G3tY3r0wnFr!ggingK3y___oKURkDSvOeRs",
center: new Microsoft.Maps.Location(0, 0),
zoom: 2
}
);
// Load the Advanced Shapes API
Microsoft.Maps.loadModule('Microsoft.Maps.AdvancedShapes', { callback: shapesModuleLoaded });
}
// Callback function
function shapesModuleLoaded() {
// Create polygon (South Africa) containing interior ring (Lesotho)
var SouthAfrica = new Microsoft.Maps.Polygon([
/* Exterior Ring */
[new MM.Location(-28.6906,16.5234), new MM.Location(-29.4587,17.0947), new MM.Location(-30.2211,17.2705), new MM.Location(-31.0529,17.666), new MM.Location(-31.6908,18.1494), new MM.Location(-32.1384,18.3691), new MM.Location(-32.6949,18.3691), new MM.Location(-32.9165,18.2373), new MM.Location(-32.8427,18.0176), new MM.Location(-33.3213,18.1934), new MM.Location(-33.8339,18.5449), new MM.Location(-34.2708,18.457), new MM.Location(-34.0891,18.8086), new MM.Location(-34.597,19.3359), new MM.Location(-34.8859,19.9951), new MM.Location(-34.4522,20.7861), new MM.Location(-34.4884,21.9287), new MM.Location(-34.0891,22.5439), new MM.Location(-34.1618,23.291), new MM.Location(-33.9798,23.7744), new MM.Location(-34.2708,24.873), new MM.Location(-33.9798,25.1367), new MM.Location(-34.1254,25.6201), new MM.Location(-33.9069,25.8838), new MM.Location(-33.8339,26.7627), new MM.Location(-33.2479,27.8174), new MM.Location(-32.3243,28.96), new MM.Location(-31.7282,29.4873), new MM.Location(-30.6379,30.7178), new MM.Location(-29.6881,31.377), new MM.Location(-29.3056,31.5088), new MM.Location(-28.7291,32.3877), new MM.Location(-28.1107,32.6953), new MM.Location(-27.2937,32.915), new MM.Location(-26.9417,33.0029), new MM.Location(-26.9025,32.2119), new MM.Location(-27.3327,32.0361), new MM.Location(-27.3327,31.2891), new MM.Location(-27.1374,31.0693), new MM.Location(-26.7848,30.8936), new MM.Location(-26.4312,30.9814), new MM.Location(-26.037,31.2012), new MM.Location(-25.7999,31.5088), new MM.Location(-25.879,31.6846), new MM.Location(-25.958,32.0361), new MM.Location(-25.0856,32.168), new MM.Location(-24.2069,32.0361), new MM.Location(-23.4834,31.6846), new MM.Location(-22.3501,31.333), new MM.Location(-22.3907,30.498), new MM.Location(-22.1874,29.9707), new MM.Location(-22.1874,29.0918), new MM.Location(-22.5126,29.0479), new MM.Location(-22.6748,28.3447), new MM.Location(-23.0393,27.9932), new MM.Location(-23.4431,27.6416), new MM.Location(-23.6445,27.1582), new MM.Location(-24.287,26.9385), new MM.Location(-24.687,26.1035), new MM.Location(-25.4433,25.7959), new MM.Location(-25.7603,25.4883), new MM.Location(-25.879,24.8291), new MM.Location(-25.7999,24.3018), new MM.Location(-25.6415,23.8623), new MM.Location(-25.3639,23.4229), new MM.Location(-25.4433,22.9834), new MM.Location(-26.037,22.6758), new MM.Location(-26.3919,22.4121), new MM.Location(-26.6671,22.1924), new MM.Location(-26.9025,21.665), new MM.Location(-26.9417,21.2256), new MM.Location(-26.8633,20.9619), new MM.Location(-26.9808,20.8301), new MM.Location(-26.5885,20.6982), new MM.Location(-26.0765,21.0059), new MM.Location(-25.5226,20.7422), new MM.Location(-25.0856,20.4785), new MM.Location(-24.8864,20.127), new MM.Location(-28.4977,20.1709), new MM.Location(-28.5749,19.7754), new MM.Location(-28.7677,19.3799), new MM.Location(-28.9985,19.3799), new MM.Location(-28.9601,18.9844), new MM.Location(-28.9216,18.5449), new MM.Location(-28.9601,17.9736), new MM.Location(-28.8062,17.7539), new MM.Location(-28.7677,17.4902), new MM.Location(-28.5363,17.3584), new MM.Location(-28.3817,17.4023), new MM.Location(-28.1107,17.2266), new MM.Location(-28.1107,17.0508), new MM.Location(-28.3431,16.9189), new MM.Location(-28.5363,16.8311), new MM.Location(-28.5749,16.6992), new MM.Location(-28.6906,16.5234)],
/* Interior Ring */
[new MM.Location(-29.6403,27.0374), new MM.Location(-29.5257,27.356), new MM.Location(-29.2864,27.5098), new MM.Location(-29.0274,27.7185), new MM.Location(-28.8735,27.9492), new MM.Location(-28.8735,28.0481), new MM.Location(-28.7195,28.2019), new MM.Location(-28.7195,28.3887), new MM.Location(-28.6327,28.4546), new MM.Location(-28.5749,28.7073), new MM.Location(-28.9216,29.0369), new MM.Location(-29.1234,29.3445), new MM.Location(-29.363,29.5093), new MM.Location(-29.497,29.3665), new MM.Location(-29.5926,29.3665), new MM.Location(-29.6881,29.2126), new MM.Location(-29.8311,29.1467), new MM.Location(-29.9359,29.2017), new MM.Location(-30.1451,28.7622), new MM.Location(-30.1641,28.4326), new MM.Location(-30.278,28.2458), new MM.Location(-30.3729,28.3008), new MM.Location(-30.4392,28.2019), new MM.Location(-30.6852,28.103), new MM.Location(-30.6379,27.7515), new MM.Location(-30.3539,27.4219), new MM.Location(-30.1831,27.4329), new MM.Location(-30.0406,27.2681), new MM.Location(-29.8406,27.2021), new MM.Location(-29.6403,27.0374)]
],
// Set a few styling options
{fillColor: new MM.Color(120, 0, 180, 0)}
);
// Place the shape on the map
map.entities.push(SouthAfrica);
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="GetMap();">
<div id='mapDiv' style="position: relative; width: 540px; height: 480px;"></div>
</body>
</html>

Sorry, I’m a newbie in spatial db’s… Do I need manually get all these coordinates for particular country (e.g.-29.6403,27.0374,-29.5257,27.356,-29.2864,27.5098..) or there is a method to get it from world_borders database ?As I see only lat/lon for particular point on the map and nothing for the whole contry board (I mean border line)…